Cryptonomicon

But here he is. The setting: a plank-paneled room above a pub in Norrsbruck, Sweden. The pub is a sailorly kind of place, catering to fishermen, which makes it congenial for Shaftoe's friend and drinking buddy: Kapitänleutnant Günter Bischoff, Kriegsmarine of the Third Reich (retired).

Bischoff gets a lot of interesting mail, and leaves it strewn all over the room. Some of the mail is from his family in Germany, and contains money. Consequently Bischoff, unlike Shaftoe, will not have to work even if this war continues, and he remains in Sweden cooling his boilers for another ten years.

Some of the mail is from the crew of U-691, according to Bischoff. After Bischoff got them all here to Norrsbruck in one piece, his second in-command, Oberleutnant zur See Karl Beck, cut a deal with the Kriegsmarine in which the crew were allowed to return to Germany, no hard feelings, no repercussions. All of them except for Bischoff climbed on board what was left of U-691 and steamed off in the direction of Kiel.

Only days later, the mail began to pour in. Every member of the crew, to a man, sent Bischoff a letter describing the heroes' welcome they had received: Dönitz himself met them at the pier and handed out hugs and kisses and medals and other tokens in embarrassing profusion. They can't stop talking about how much they want dear Günter to come back home.

Dear Günter isn't budging; he's been sitting in his little room for a couple of months now. His world consists of pen, ink, paper, candles, cups of coffee, bottles of aquavit, the soothing beat of the surf. Every crash of wave on shore, he says, reminds him that he is above sea level now, where men were meant to live. His mind is always back therea hundred feet below the surface of the gelid Atlantic, trapped like a rat in a sewer pipe, cringing from the explosions of the depths charges. He lived a hundred years that way, and spent every moment of those hundred years dreaming of the Surface. He vowed, ten thousand times, that if he ever made it back up to the world of air and light, he would enjoy every breath, revel in every moment.

That's pretty much what he's been doing, here in Norrsbruck. He has his personal journal, and he's been going through it, page by page, filling in all of the details that he didn't have time to jot down, before he forgets them. Someday, after the war, it'll make a book: one of a million war memoirs that will clog libraries from Novosibirsk to Gander to Sequim to Batavia.

The pace of incoming mail dropped dramatically after the first weeks. Several of his men still write to him faithfully. Shaftoe is used to seeing their letters scattered around the place when he comes to visit. Most of them are written on scraps of cheap, greyish paper.

Directionless silver light infiltrates the room through Bischoff's window, illuminating what looks like a rectangular pool of heavy cream on his tabletop. It is some kind of official Hun stationery, surmounted by a raptor clenching a swastika. The letter is handwritten, not typed. When Bischoff sets his wet glass down on it, the ink dissolves.

And when Bischoff goes to empty his bladder, Shaftoe can't keep his eyes away from it. He knows that this is bad manners, but the Second World War has led him into all sorts of uncouth behavior, and there don't seem to be any angry grandpas lurking in the trenches with doubled belts; no consequences at all for the wicked, in fact. Maybe that will change in a couple of years, if the Germans and the Nips lose the war. But that reckoning will be so great and terrible that Shaftoe's glance at Bischoff's letter will probably go unnoticed.

It came in an envelope. The first line of the address is very long, and consists of "Günter BISCHOFF" preceded by a string of ranks and titles, and followed by a series of letters. The return address has been savaged by Bischoffs letter opener, but it's somewhere in Berlin.

The letter itself is an impossible snarl of Germanic cursive. It is signed, hugely, with a single word. Shaftoe spends some time trying to make out that word; he whose John Hancock this is. Must have an ego that ranks right up there with the General's.

When Shaftoe figures out the signature belongs to Dönitz, he gets all tingly. That Dönitz is an important guy--Shaftoe's even seen him on a newsreel, congratulating a grimy U-boat crew, fresh from a salty spree.

Why's he writing love notes to Bischoff? Shaftoe can't read this stuff any better than he could Nipponese. But he can see a few figures. Dönitz is talking numbers. Perhaps tons of shipping sunk, or casualties on the Eastern Front. Perhaps money.

"Oh, yes!" Bischoff says, having somehow reappeared in the room without making any noise. When you're down in a U-boat, running silent, you learn how to walk quietly. "I have come up with a hypothesis on the gold."

"What gold?" Shaftoe says. He knows, of course, but having been caught in an act of flagrant naughtiness, his instinct is to play innocent.